A first-hand report on Syria’s mass exodus

In one factory, found by chance because of a door left slightly ajar, the owner invites a reporter to return at 4 p.m. when his workers have a 15-minute break. At the appointed time, the machines stop, the 20 or so workers gather and tea is produced among piles of sweatshirts and pyjamas with sports logos and not-quite-right English slogans. The owner says his shop works to replicate established brands.

Abdul, 15, sports the first trace of a moustache. From Aleppo, he says he earns a little over $100 a month. He says he’d like to go to school but must support his family.

His co-workers include two 10-year-old sisters, Hasma and Murphad, also from Aleppo, whose job is to shuttle fabric from piles in the centre of the room to the sewing machines along its walls. Hasma’s hands drift nervously to her mouth when she’s not busy. Neither goes to school. Hasma says she misses it.

The owner is asked how much they are paid. “I give them something,” he says.

In Lebanon, refugee kids sell tissues and shoeshines or beg on city streets, as in Turkey and Jordan. But among the Syrian refugees in informal tent settlements in the Beqaa Valley, close to Syria and separated from Beirut by mountains, there also exists an almost feudal form of indentured labour.

The problem has its origins before Syria’s civil war began. Syrians would come to Beqaa to work seasonally in agriculture. Typically, a man known as the sheweesh stayed during the off-season and organized work for members of his family or village.

When the Syrian civil war drove thousands of Syrians into Lebanon, many relied on their sheweesh to arrange transport, pay smugglers and obtain a tent or shack in a camp on rented private land. In the process, refugees accumulated large debts to their sheweesh that must be repaid — through labour. Lebanese landowners in Beqaa still need workers, and the sheweesh hires out refugees who owe him money.

Awash, 37, lives in a cramped cinderblock hut with her extended family. The family grew when her father took a second wife who was widowed with five kids. Her own husband doesn’t work. “He’s old,” she says. Her husband is 45. “He’s also fat,” adds her teenage half-brother.

This leaves Awash and the children as breadwinners. Rent for residents of the camp, paid to the sheweesh, is about $900 a year per family, more for those who don’t have children who can work. Awash is breastfeeding her youngest child but is forced to leave her for seven hours a day to plant and harvest crops. Most of the children work, too. Twelve-year-old Hassan says the Lebanese farm owner shoots a pistol into the ground near his feet or over his head if he accidentally leaves a potato in the soil.

Even Manal, age 10, works in the fields. The bunny, heart and flowers on her zip-up sweatshirt cannot disguise the drawn look of exhaustion on her face that seems utterly out of place in a child so young. She’s never been to school. “I feel very tired,” she says flatly.

“I force her to work because the sheweesh needs to get paid and we need to live,” Awash says. She owes the sheweesh more than $1,000, and says she has no idea if she can ever pay the debt.

Mawas Mohammad Araji, mayor of the nearby town of Bar Elias, has heard some Syrian refugees in the area are exploited, but says most refugees are quiet about it.

“Syrians are not slaves to their sheweesh. But the problem is nobody reports. If there is a report, we will act,” he says.

Ali al-Mohammad, sheweesh at another refugee settlement in the Beqaa Valley, is offended at the suggestion that there might be something about the arrangement deserving of censure.

“For two years now I’ve been paying for bread and medicine for families in the camp, even if they owe me money,” he says. He estimates he is owed about $30,000.

Mohammad lives among those who work for him, albeit in a nicer structure with frilled fabric on the walls and clean carpets and cushions on the floor. He has been in Lebanon for decades, managing seasonal workers and now refugees. Most in his camp are from Aleppo and Raqqa provinces. He describes his role in a way that makes it sound more like that of a godfather.

“A sheweesh is responsible for the camp and the workers. If they need money, I will provide it. I get them work and transport them. If they get hurt, I am responsible.”

Asked about kids in the camp, Mohammad says: “I only employ people who are at least 13 years old.

Early marriage, like child labour, robs many Syrian refugees of an education. While it was common before the war in some rural communities for teenaged girls to marry, poverty and social dislocation have exacerbated the trend.

Earlier this winter, Mona wed her cousin Abdullah in the mudfilled Beqaa Valley tent settlement where they live. A cellphone video of the wedding shows Mona in a white dress, a crowd of men and women, and snow falling like confetti. There was a musical band and pots of chicken for guests.

It was a happier affair than the sombre weddings held in ISILcontrolled Deir ez-Zor, from which they fled, she says. But she wishes it had happened later. Mona was 14 or 15 when she got married; Abdullah, 18.

“If it was up to me, I would have preferred to wait. But my parents decided and I agreed because it was the right decision. It’s to provide protection. There are a lot of people without morals,” she says.

“If I could have stayed in school, I would have loved to be a dentist. I really wish, but now that I am married, that becomes impossible.”

Abdullah’s explanation for why he got married is simpler. “I loved her,” he says.

Another young bride in the settlement repeats Mona’s explanation about the need for protection. They’re talking about their families’ fear of rape or premarital sex in an environment that is overcrowded, lacks privacy and where normal family structures may be upended by absent or dead fathers and brothers.

Sometimes the pressure to get married is financial. In a poor neighbourhood in eastern Amman, a Syrian woman heads a household of two daughters and three grandchildren, largely on her own because her diabetic husband stays with their son in a refugee camp where he can get medical care.

“That tea you’re drinking is the last food we have,” she says. She’s deep in debt and her family is often cold and hungry.

An unemployed Jordanian neighbour offered her about $15 to marry her daughter. She refused. Stories abound of Jordanian men seeking out Syrian refugee women — in part because Syrian women have a reputation for beauty, and in part because they believe it requires less money to marry them.

“I do prefer Syrian women. And they accept anything. Jordanian women want three to four thousand dollars,” says Mohammad Ameri during a life skills class in Jordan’s northern Irbid province that is funded by the Canadian government through the NGO Save the Children Canada.

“Even before the Syrian crisis there were no jobs. And now they’re marrying our men? It’s awful,” responds Manal Hennawi, adding that she also thinks Syrian women are particularly attractive. She’s half-Syrian herself.

Safa Zreiqi, another student, isn’t bothered that young men in her province look for wives among Syrian refugees. “Some of us don’t want to get married,” she says. “We didn’t go to school for nothing. What’s a shame is that we studied and got degrees and can’t get work.”

I WOULD HAVE PREFERRED TO WAIT (FOR MARRIAGE). BUT MY PARENTS DECIDED AND ... IT WAS THE RIGHT DECISION. IT’S TO PROVIDE PROTECTION. THERE ARE A LOT OF PEOPLE WITHOUT MORALS. IF I COULD HAVE STAYED IN SCHOOL, I WOULD HAVE LOVED TO BE A DENTIST. — MONA

I FORCE (MY 10-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER) TO WORK BECAUSE THE SHEWEESH NEEDS TO GET PAID AND WE NEED TO LIVE.